All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
If you blinked you likely missed it: Russell Brand has re-Branded. He of naughty mid-noughties fame has found God. This week the former husband of Katy Perry turned fringe-right conspiracist is hawking a $240 so-called magical amulet, which he claims (via a Bluetooth mic, ironically) can protect you from Wi-Fi signals and other “evil energies.” His X feed is a bunting of greeting-card-digestible prophesying; his new weekly special is a “space where [he] can talk about [his] faith” since becoming a believer. Recent footage saw him in tighty-whities, baptizing townsfolk in a river. Look, I’m not here to deride finding religion or knock the higher power where millions (billions?) of people find sanctuary, especially after a history of addiction. But while the skeptics among us may smell a fish when it comes to Russell’s timely rebirth, many Christians are smelling five thousand.
Where do I start with Brand’s evangelical swerve? He rose to British fame with a Jesus haircut (a sign!?) and the deepest V-neck tees, espousing a signature cavalier intelligence across television and radio. The cultural landscape at the time made way for his right up to and occasionally over the line misogynistic patter, cut through as it was with whimsy. We liked (or at least, tolerated) men bragging gutturally of their conquests, just as much as we liked to watch women fall apart.
Hindsight is a helluva drug, and Brand didn’t create this toxic culture, despite benefiting from it. Nowadays, his audaciously eccentric nature, along with his extreme promiscuity, is souring into something far less palatable: a litany of horrific accusations.
In September of last year, it was revealed that Brand had been accused of raping, sexual assaulting, and emotionally abusing four women at the height of his fame. He allegedly groomed a 16-year-old, who said he suggested how to deceive her parents into allowing her to visit him and forced his penis down her throat. Another woman claimed she had been raped at his Los Angeles home. Brand has said that these are “very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.” He has also described taking an “enforced holiday” to Las Vegas with Diddy in 2010.
In the wake of such viscerally upsetting controversies, celebrity crisis management 101 would tell you to take accountability, apologize, go dark, and wait. But Brand—a man who’s one clear gift, by his own admittance, is “attracting attention”—has taken an entirely different tack, remaining staunchly in the public eye, continuing on his path as an antiestablishment commentator, and getting baptized in the River Thames by Bear Grylls. Again, spiritual rebirth is nothing to scoff at, but Brand’s positioned himself as an apostle of new masculinity—the “consensual” sex forgiven—who can help you part with 240 bucks for a Lifetune Flex from Aires Tech.
I’m left wondering if paying all that money is the truest route to spiritual salvation. I’d assumed it was better to give up some worldly goods or volunteer in your community. It’s dizzying how many factions Brand’s brand pulls together, a heavy plait of online conspiracy theory, incel-adjacent hypermasculinity, and both the political and religious right wing. It feels to many like a perfect storm: Some are suggesting that Brand has leaned into anti-embellishment conspiracy theories and proselytizing about not believing what you read in the press in an attempt to debunk the serious sexual accusations before they came out.
I’m not sure what to make of the near-constant self-centering Brand’s been able to achieve in the wake of such dreadful allegations. As things have developed, Brand’s desire for attention has never waned. I guess the one thing a magical amulet can’t protect you from is yourself.